Humans of City Year DC: Journey to Work

2017-05-19

By Ariel Greenaway, AmeriCorps member serving on the HSBC team at Plummer School

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. My arm shoots out across my nightstand. My fingers sluggishly crawl over my notepad toward the snooze. Snooze. I roll over to my side and pull the covers over my head. Its 4:10 am and it's time to get up, Ariel! You can do this, just move your legs!

This has been my morning for the past 7 months, since joining City Year in August. When I first moved to Washington, DC from Kennesaw, GA, I was not fully adept to public transportation. Except for our local school shuttle, called the BOB. I was used to traveling three simple lines with a mile and half radius. Now, I am traveling every day on multiple lines spanning 42.6 miles just one way. What a trip!

My daily commute is a total of 3 and a half hours on a good day and 4 hours on a not-so-good day. I drive my car to the Park and Ride in West Baltimore, next is the Marc train into Union Station, then I take bus 97 to Texas Ave, and finally walk up the hill to the school where I serve.

I enjoy my morning commute the most. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely an insanely early wake up time, but I have a chance to do work, catch up on my reading (Currently reading “Stand By Me” by Neta Jackson), talk to my parents, or - my all-time favorite - sleep. I have found that my most productive time is on the train to and from Baltimore. The trekking through two cities daily is hard. Leaving my house at 5:10 and not coming back until 8pm is rough. Nevertheless, I know that I made the sacrifice to serve and that is something I can be content with.